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shanesmp

Thanks for sharing that Con! I was curious to know what back at home in Parramatta got... Weather has been interesting around NSW by the looks, particularly the NE corner and SEQ...

Been rainy and cold here... on and off snow on the mountains. Funnily enough, this appears to be one of the worst starts to the snow season they have had here in a while.. unfortunately had to occur when Phil and I were going for a trip to Whistler... hopefully will improve. Still plenty of photo ops to be had.

I'll be back on Dec 17th and have an extremely bad case of SDS... Shane will probably drive a fair way to get his storm fix/es if need be. Hope everyone over the southern side of the world has been doing good!

I am glad you and Paul were able to get the structure contained in this storm. There is interesting inflow and it seems perhaps even a wall cloud on the lowest base? Definitely eventually the outflow was going to win out.

Good stuff!

Here's some of my photos taken on Saturday 29th Nov - click for larger view.

This was the earlier storm that passed over the extreme southwestern suburbs. It eventually weakened and likely proceeded off the coast. I had Geoff Thurtell come over for a visit during the time the storms were about to progress over the central metropolitan area. Not trying to make you feel guilty or anything Geoff haha. The development and movement was rather rapid I must say.

The first of the following photographs shows the northwestern view of the storm after it had passed over Parramatta. The other pictures are of storms to its northwest and southwest later and although not as severe, they did drop a few visible lighting bolts and made for some spectacular photography.

One of the characteristics which added to the hail making atmosphere was the dry air aloft - well above 700hPa according to the model soundings. Combined with the cold air and approaching upper trough, it is not surprising that large hail was observed.

I had a concert to attend at Homebush during the evening, so I met with Paul at Rhodes for a coffee~ 5:00pm. At around 6:30 we parted ways, my car being deep in the multistory car park, his being on the street. While on the way to the car he called and, while sounding very excited, said that there was a beautiful base and a lot of lightning (since he lives in Melbourne now, I wasnt overly enthused just yet!). After racing out on the street though I was surprised to see this rather organised looking storm just to our west.

Anyway I had to go to the concert so I got a phone pic heading south along Homebush Bay Drive. The storm was putting on quite a show of clear air CGs, deep booming thunder and all this while there was a solid easterly infeed and signs of a storm that was starting to rotate --in the end it was probably all to transient but it looked good. During the concert, the second storm threatened with Cgs but moved by to the north.

Based on the persistent updraft region that I witnessed for over half an hour and some evidence of rotation, a possible left move and my and Ruckle's pics, I'm starting to think this was a supercell or certainly pretty close by definition. What do others think of this possibility?

awesome photos and reports everyone, loving it! Congrats on your first sunset strike Shauno - you could tell by the previous photo of you guys standing there you had that killer stare for something to happen! I reckon it's the colors that really highlight the things. Fairly dramatic shots of the flooded area also posted - a deluge would be an understatement.

Jimmy, nice variety of shots from last Saturday's events. A couple of the guys at work who live in Abbotsbury and Greystanes also said they had hail with similar size and characteristics from that storm, so a reasonable hailpath from that cell, and Shane, looking forward to seeing your reports and photos once you're back on the local scene, Cheers, Con.

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Jeff Brislane

I chased saturdays storm from the west and they were certainly very fast moving. I didn't see any of the good structure. The image below was taken at roper road on the M4 and by the time I got to walgrove road (2km) the outflow had already crossed the M4! And wasn't driving slowly either. I should've gone and sat on rooty hill and watch but i stupidly gave chase so i missed a whole heap of great photo ops.